Light has more qualities than you think: temperature, brightness, and diffusion, just to name three. When it comes to replicating it in the digital world, you need strong materials and lighting tools, and Maya offers both. Learn how to replicate three unique lighting setups in interior scenes, starting with direct daylight. After you produce the daylight renderings, Adam Crespi shows how to light the scene with interior lights suitable for night or dusk shots, and then use sky portals to create soft indirect light that blooms through the windowswindows. He follows up with rendering specular, mask, and ambient occlusion passes, and then shows how to composite the renderings in both Adobe After Effects and The Foundry Nuke.

Topics include:
Creating and applying materials with luster and shine
Creating a mental ray Daylight system
Casting light from interior fixtures
Lighting with sky portals
Creating an ambient occlusion rendering pass
Fine-tuning Final Gather and lighting
Compositing in Nuke and After Effects
Adding depth of field, highlights, and glow